


Nowhere Else To Run

by Anonymous



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29090769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Akksul is dangerous to keep in Aya, but he's even more dangerous if he's cut loose and left to his own devices. That's the original reason Evfra keeps him close by.Things change.
Relationships: Akksul/Evfra de Tershaav
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	Nowhere Else To Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greygerbil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/gifts).



He had been angry for so long that it seemed he would never know anything else.

It was not an intoxicating feeling; he derived no thrill, no joy, no greater measure of relief for embracing it. It drove him when all else fell away, a bright fire that burned in his core until there was nothing else but a shell of meat to encase it, but it brought no comfort. He was past the point of comfort. There was nothing to him but rage.

Aya was supposed to help. It had been thus the first time he’d escaped the labor camps, and so it was now. A shining jewel hidden in the Scourge, with its smooth white walls and colorful canopies, filled to the brim with angara that feared leaving rather than the constant attacks of the kett. Even in paradise, anxiety chased through the crowds, a constant fog that dampened the spirits of all those who came to Aya to relax for just a moment. They’d brought him here, to the Moshae’s apartments with her most precious artifacts, and they’d hoped her presence could heal the broken thing still wearing his skin.

They had been wrong, the first time. She had been wrong, the first time, knowledgeable but unknowing, all the intellect and none of the experience.

This time was different. This time, there were guards.

Akksul ignored them as he had ignored them every day he’d walked these streets since Jaal had taken all his hypocrisies and thrown them in his face. Aya brought no comfort, but it did have a novelty to it; killing aliens had become a routine more than a purpose, the fire in him driving him to ever greater extremes just to feel as if he were making a difference, and now peace was strange. Ill-fitting. 

He ignored the aliens lingering on Aya now, taking up the space that should have belonged to angara, feeding the constant miasma of fear with their invasive presence. Their Pathfinder might have killed the Archon, but their Pathfinder was one woman. Her actions could not speak for the whole of her people.

They brought him to Aya because they did not trust him anywhere else, because the Moshae had loved him as a student once, because Jaal had been his inferior up until the moment he’d shown Akksul the monster he’d become. They _said_ that seeing aliens and angara working hand in hand might go a way towards easing the hatred that gnawed at his bones, but he did not see it. His sins were many, but all of them revolved around the betrayals he’d inflicted upon the angara. He would not feel guilt for killing an alien, no matter how often the Moshae asked it of him.

Today she had asked something different. Another novelty.

He did not expect to get through the doors of the Resistance Headquarters, not with his guards dogging his heels at all moments of the day. But she had asked him to at least try, knowing as she did that he had a dozen different encampments hidden around the galaxy with precious artifacts and pieces of their heritage hidden with them. The Roekaar had been broken by his hypocrisy and trickled back to the Resistance in bits and pieces, those of them that had not fled to even more remote angara settlements on Voeld, Havarl, the still undiscovered Issul that had yet to feel the touch of alien feet on its soil. There weren’t many to vouch for him on Aya—a deliberate choice, he thought.

It was quite a surprise when they let him through. Much less of a surprise when he was then carefully but firmly directed towards Evfra, rather than being allowed to move through the base at his own leisure. Akksul wouldn’t have trusted himself either.

Conversations quieted as he passed by, though they need not have bothered; a glance at one screen and it was the signal of a heskaarl team that he’d marked weeks ago, still hanging in the darkspace around Kadara. He’d been close-lipped about how much he knew, and eventually, they had given up trying to tease it out of him. Perhaps they wouldn’t have been so free with him in Aya if his intimate knowledge of the Resistance were advertised a little louder.

Perhaps that was the lesson the Moshae was trying to impart this time: Evfra could be trusted. With the locations of his secret outposts, yes, but also with the knowledge that Akksul had watched the Resistance as closely as the Roekaar had been watched in turn. Closer, even. There were no old angara families tirelessly working to move supplies to an extremist group, no co-ops or collectives meant to feed and house them. They had plenty of sympathizers but little support.

Perhaps that was the other lesson. The Moshae had a wicked mind, ever fond of setting puzzles upon puzzles within teachings, thinking that the knowledge would be sweeter for the effort it took to gain it.

“Akksul,” Evfra greeted, a quiet undertone of wariness running under his words. “The Moshae said that you had some information for me.”

The _third_ lesson, then: if he was two steps ahead, then the Moshae was three. Akksul was startled to find that he’d missed the feeling of being on the backfoot, chasing after whatever infuriating concept she was trying to impart.

“Locations of Roekaar camps,” he said, rather than asking what her message had contained. “Some of them have pieces of our history, or _are_ that history—the vaults were a good place to hide if one knew how to activate them. Since it would seem that the kett are less of an issue, the Moshae suggested that some of those artifacts be brought to cultural centers.”

He didn’t tell Evfra that the camps would be impossible to reach without his aid, because that much was obvious. And Akksul did not miss the way the others watched him out of the corners of their eyes, the way angara turned towards him as they always had. It had been dangerously easy to let the anger slip free and bring the Roekaar to his side the first time. How easy would it be a second time?

Not quite as easy as it seemed, he decided as those gazes shifted towards Evfra instead, waiting for his decision on the matter. Akksul knew, without even a hint of arrogance, that he was born to lead, wrapped in charisma and the fever-bright hunger for—

Learning, once. Revenge, the second time. He wondered what that fire would seize on for the third.

Evfra did not make his choices lightly. He weighed options with a gravity that seemed to bend the room around him, the grim lines of his face drawing the eyes to the sharp ridge of his nose, the unhappy curl of his lips, the ragged scar over cheek and brow. He was not Jaal, earnest and filled with depths of emotion that put other angara to shame, nor was he the Moshae, filled with a grace that only age and a true reverence for knowledge could bring. Evfra was a rock, set firmly in the center of the Resistance, keeping it tied down in the face of every maelstrom that tried to shake it.

And handsome to boot. Akksul wondered how many marriage offers had been thrown at him by the old families once they realized his influence wouldn’t fade. The aristocracy was a thing of the past, but those old families held more in their unyielding grip than they liked to say.

He’d used that once, with the Ama Darav’s. Perhaps it had been a mistake, since it had brought Jaal to destroy his self-righteousness. Perhaps it was a fool’s game to wonder at other universes in which he’d never come.

“Come see me at the end of the day,” Evfra said finally, keying a message that arrived on Akksul’s multitool a moment later.

“As you like,” Akksul told him, a twist of irony to the words that Evfra caught with a frown. Mission accomplished, he left, his guards a pair of silent shadows to replace the one burned away by Aya’s sun.

A change in the routine of changes. For the best, he supposed. Ancestors only knew what sort of trouble he’d make if monotony gave him reason to let the anger slip its leash again. He had too few reasons to contain it as it was.

* * *

Evfra did not trust him.

Considering that Evfra had set the guards on him in the first place, Akksul thought that conclusion was a little obvious. What _did_ surprise him was the way Evfra dismissed them as Aya’s sun sank below the horizon, its storm clouds going the brilliant mix of purple and red that looked so much like alien blood washing through the sky. He watched them leave, the last two out of the war room where Evfra’s desk stood apart from all others, then finally turned his attention to the man standing by the windows.

The setting sun made Evfra’s pale blue skin vivid, the deep indigo undertones spilling out under its dying light. An artist’s dream to paint, if Evfra had ever been amenable to artists in the first place—Akksul knew many things, but Evfra’s private thoughts and preferences were not some of them.

“If you don’t think I’ll kill you, why bother with the guards at all?” Akksul asked, that old curiosity finally stirring under the smoldering blanket of anger.

“To stop you from giving speeches.” Evfra gestured towards the desk. “It’s unlocked. You can input the coordinates directly, to avoid any leaks. When I send a team to retrieve them, there will be at least one former Roekaar in each—perhaps they’ll be able to get their fellows to put the weapons down.”

“As long as the teams are exclusively angara, there should be no issues.” Evfra’s chair was surprisingly uncomfortable. No wonder the man always stood.

“They’ll be Resistance teams. The Nexus can sit this one out.” There was a hint of _something_ there, some resentment or dislike that Akksul’s idle mind seized upon even as his fingers spilled secrets into the maw of Evfra’s computer. The things he could have done, had he realized how much Evfra disliked the aliens too. If only he hadn’t been blinded by hate, if only he’d seized upon that hint when he’d first decided to break away from the Resistance—

Ah, but therein lie the problem. Guards to keep him from proselytizing? He’d known Evfra was clever—blunt like a hammer rather than sharp like a knife, but clever and subtle despite appearances. He’d still thought that the close watch was a fear of violence rather than a fear of ideology. Akksul had not given him enough credit.

A mistake he did not intend to repeat.

The terminal pinged softly as a message came in, flickering up on the screen. He did nothing to stop it, skimming its contents as he meticulously entered notes on the Roekaar camps so Evfra’s soldiers would be prepared for the traps and diversions they used to hide. It was a surprisingly long message, and not one from a Resistance member.

“Naraaji Teshiin doesn’t like you very much,” he observed. Evfra gave the terminal a dirty look, but he didn’t come over and drag Akksul away. Despite Naraaji’s apparent belief in his own importance, his complaints did not merit any sort of military secrecy.

“None of the Teshiin like me very much.” There was a dry sort of humor there, something Akksul hadn’t heard in Evfra’s voice before. His curiosity grew. “I don’t favor them over all others, and I don’t devote Resistance resources to escorting them whenever they want to travel. They think they deserve better.”

“And you’ve told them as much, I suppose.” Once, his voice had been yet another in the mass, embittered by Evfra’s lack of personal regard. At least he’d had merit to his own outrage, misplaced though it might have been. 

The silence from Evfra dragged on long enough that Akksul finally looked over at him. His face was set in a grim expression, the sun outlining him in gold and red. “I’ve been ignoring them, actually. I don’t have time to deal with every unhappy merchant who wants special attention.”

How many times had he thought something similar? How many times had his focus been shifted from the necessary to the petty, simply to keep the Roekaar walking that tightrope between the perception of them as extremists and the truth that they were the only ones willing to stand against the alien invaders? And yet, Akksul had turned his attention to the petty anyways, soothed worries and bolstered support, always bringing a few more recruits back with every visit to quell complaints about his presence… Not that it had mattered much, in the end. He’d lost himself along the way.

But it was an _infinitely_ better idea than ignoring the messages in the first place.

“You should have a secretary to handle these,” he told Evfra, reading the message more closely this time. “It wouldn’t be hard to mollify them. An assurance that you’ll consider their shipping routes when posting soldiers, the occasional pass over their holdings when the Resistance is sweeping the planet—you wouldn’t have to promise anything more than you already do.”

“Words are not my strong suit.” Evfra leaned against the desk, actually reading the message himself this time. Then he turned his cool gaze on Akksul and said, “You’re not doing anything right now, _you_ can handle it.”

That was not what he’d been expecting. For once, his clever tongue failed him, and Akksul couldn’t think of an appropriate way to refuse the job; his failure put the control firmly back into Evfra’s hands and, still baffled by this seismic change in circumstance, he found himself given access to Evfra’s public commline and told to report for duty in the morning.

When the Moshae had sent him to Evfra, he did not think a job was what she’d intended. It wasn’t what _he_ intended with his mild critique of Evfra’s policies. And if the confusion of his typical shadows was any indication, it wasn’t what anyone in the Resistance had prepared for.

For reasons that no one could explain, Evfra was offering a chance at redemption to him. Akksul wasn’t sure what to do with that.

The strange thing about that meager amount of trust was the way it cropped up in places he didn’t expect. Evfra gave him a list of dissenters, those powerful enough in economic or social circles that their voices couldn’t be ignored, and told him to make the complaints go away. He’d been angry when he said it, but it was a slow-burning anger, deeply unlike the molten rage always waiting for a chance to erupt within Akksul’s heart.

On the face of it, it was a stupid decision. These were the angara who disliked Evfra for their own reasons, but those reasons so often aligned with Akksul’s own feelings that it would have been easy to turn them to his cause. A few weeks ago, a lifetime ago, he wouldn’t have been tempted—he simply _would have_ , reaching out to them through clandestine channels or intermediaries, inviting them to speeches where his voice could sway them away from their last remnants of propriety. The Roekaar had been branded as extremists too quickly for him to use those connections on his own terms, but with Evfra’s blessing, he had that power resting in his hands.

Akksul was always angry, but it was a different kind of anger now too—closer to Evfra’s, a smolder rather than an inferno. Easy enough to be angry at the feebleness of the complaints, easy enough to stoke his fury over the way these angara cut at the foundations of the Resistance rather than uplifting it, easy enough to take all his hypocrisy and add another layer to it. He could make these angara his. He did not.

Turning them to Evfra’s side was a more engaging task anyway; they would have fallen into Akksul’s hands easily, but they dug their heels in when nudged towards progress and spilled outrage into messages over text and audio. The challenge was getting them to support the cause without tipping his hand and revealing that Evfra wasn’t even looking at their messages anymore. It required a subtlety that took more of his attention than he wanted to admit.

He strayed from the studies that once kept him occupied, watched by the too-knowing Moshae when he came to their regular meetings. There was no joy in uncovering their history any longer, only a grim sort of satisfaction in knowing that the kett had not destroyed these pieces yet. Even then, he’d been willing to sacrifice the Forge. If the Moshae was fascinated by the implications of the Jaardan, Akksul wished her all the best, but it was not his obsession any longer.

But Evfra? Evfra’s gravity had caught him well, a black hole of tragedy and grim-faced pragmatism that Akksul couldn’t help but fall into. He remembered the feeling of betrayal all too well, the bitter taste when he’d reached civilization with Thaldyr and realized that they never would have been found. The Resistance had failed him once, and he had used that failure to drive a wedge between the more moderate factions and those that had been wronged the way he was.

The anger remained, but the sense of betrayal had faded. Evfra did not sit idly by as the angara suffered, no matter that his busy hands were still too slow to save Akksul. With his unique position supervising a portion of Evfra’s mail, it was easier to see and easier to forgive.

It helped that Evfra gave grudging thanks whenever one of those angara-shaped problems cleared up. Akksul had always been good with people but it was a novelty to have that skill recognized for what it was—the Moshae loved him as a student, but she’d never approved of the sway he had over others. His mothers had been indulgent without any need to praise him for obvious accomplishments. Both of these facts gave him a sense of great irony that finally, the one person to acknowledge his influence was Evfra, whose own magnetism was the stuff of wistful conversations in the tavetaan and anonymous screeds on message boards.

The part of him always ticking away in its anger, quietly divvying up the potential supporters with those that couldn’t be trusted, marveled at that. Jaal, well, Jaal had always had a pretty face. Even when they were students, he’d been terribly oblivious to how much flirtation he actually engaged with. But Evfra—

Handsome, yes. Solid in his ideals, yes. Charismatic? Akksul would not have said so, once, when he was so embittered that he couldn’t imagine why anyone followed that incompetent leadership. This second time around, he could watch the Resistance in Aya with something other than loathing, and his eyes were clearer for it.

The time bomb in his head wondered what the galaxy would look like if the three of them split apart. Jaal, the progressive lover of aliens, Akksul, driven by his hatred before anything else, and Evfra, grabbing at what remained of the angara and forcing them into a shape that suited his purpose. And the part of him that _wasn’t_ angry, the part of him that looked upon Aya and wept at the beauty, that regretted setting bombs in the Forge, that wanted to heal more than it wanted to hurt—that part of him was very glad that Evfra had corraled his two most likely opponents in that war.

Akksul did not want to see the angara destroyed. It was for the best that he’d been stopped. But he couldn’t stop himself from wondering.

His guards had been quietly dismissed. He’d noticed immediately, two weeks after building a routine of visiting the Resistance headquarters before his daily meetings with the Moshae, but he’d stayed the course for a few days longer to see if they would return. When they didn’t, Akksul took the opportunity to vary his routes more and more with each day, testing the bounds of where he could go before someone would comment on it.

He was being watched, of that he was certain. Just as he was certain that Evfra at least skimmed the correspondance Akksul was handling, checking to be sure that nothing was promised or withheld at Akksul’s whim. 

It was a game that caught his attention, trying to anticipate what betrayal Evfra might think of him and then deliberately doing everything in his power to be honest. Not a very angaran characteristic, this sort of manipulation, but it brought him some amusement. Akksul did not lie, nor did he misrepresent his actions—he simply refused to clarify unless Evfra asked and did his best to remove all the problems in Evfra’s way without fanfare.

These days, Evfra didn’t seem to expect much betrayal at all. He doled out his grim, reluctant praise for Akksul’s efforts, then dug into the myriad of other problems and turned his attention away again. It was frustrating, that trust, because it made it harder to catch Evfra’s attention. What point in being deliberately well-behaved if that was expected of him in the first place?

And yet, he didn’t break his private word to himself. It would be easier, far easier, to cause problems for no reason other than his own edification. More rewarding to get those reluctantly given compliments on his work.

He wasn’t the only one given praise with that sort of teeth-pulling gravity. Positioned as he was in Evfra’s war room, Akksul was able to witness the way he spoke to the men and women stationed there, monitoring communications from the Resistance and the movements of the aliens in their galaxy. The style was fundamentally different from his own, in ways that Akksul found fascinating; where Akksul gave personal attention and impassioned rhetoric, Evfra gave brief acknowledgement and blunt assessments. There was no hostility in it, despite the occasional sardonic twist to his words, and the Resistance blossomed under that unadorned leadership.

It was only as he idly tracked Evfra across Aya that Akksul finally admitted that he might, in fact, have another reason for his attention to those sorts of details.

The curse of idle hands and a brilliant mind meant he fell into obsessions. Akksul knew that about himself—it was one of the reasons he’d first gone to learn under the Moshae, after all, and certainly it was behind his meteoric rise in the unofficial ranks of her students. Once, it had been their history that caught his imagination; then, only the pursuit of revenge and a desire to enact his vengeance upon all invaders to his home. Now it was Evfra, all those things that Akksul had refused to see when he started the Roekaar now catching his gaze and keeping it.

He was not _following_ Evfra now, per se. There was a market on the far end of Aya’s capital, one that was out of his way that he’d never felt any interest in visiting with his guards in tow. The market was his true destination, and if anyone asked, that is what Akksul would tell them.

That it gave him the opportunity to watch Evfra’s path on a lower level was merely a bonus that he was taking full advantage of. The buildings below were residential in nature, which Akksul considered with interest—his level was primarily businesses, open-air stalls and various communal spaces with their doors open to the populace, and he could see a reason why Evfra might come to listen to what the people were saying. But the homes below were reserved for the few permanent residents on Aya, those for whom influence or infirmity meant that they were not beholden to the Vesaal.

As Evfra slowed, Akksul leaned against a balcony and watched, marking the location and memorizing the numbers on the outside. No one came to meet Evfra at the door. And as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, Evfra did not emerge again.

He mulled that over as he finally turned and started the walk back towards his own living quarters. Not that Evfra’s residence on Aya was likely a secret—if for no reason other than the fact that the permanent neighborhoods were well known, and Evfra was a public enough figure that the information was available to those who asked. But there was a difference between knowing that fact in the abstract and stumbling across the location in his own time.

Akksul wasn’t certain what he would do with the knowledge, and filed it away for later consideration. Perhaps it would become useful in time.

* * *

It would be easy to cut the heart of the Resistance out and make it his, or so he told himself on the occasions where Evfra’s people forgot what Akksul was and fell into the temptation of listening to him. In truth, he knew it would never be that easy—anger made him reckless and he’d lost a great deal of face with them upon shooting Jaal. All the passionate speeches and righteous screeds could not sway them to his side so quickly after that. But they talked to him, sharing information that he thought imprudent to share, and they didn’t think to exclude him after a month of his presence in the war room.

Evfra was not at his desk that day, an absence that went unmentioned but nevertheless lingered over the soldiers working there. Akksul turned that fact over in his head, considering it from all angles as he sifted through Evfra’s emails and mentally mapped out the shifts in angara politics as peace dragged on. The latter was a task that came to him with ease; the former was a much more diverting exercise.

No guards followed him out of headquarters when he left around midday, his fingers rapidly tapping out a regretful message to the Moshae postponing their meeting until tomorrow.

He didn’t pick up fruit or any other gifts, and he didn’t stop by his own living quarters on the way there. Better not to let any potential watchers suspect what he might be doing. It was very possible that Evfra was on a covert mission of some kind, though the necessity for those shrank with every day, and equally possible that he would not answer the door. There was no reason for him to think that Akksul knew where he lived or would come visit him.

There was no good reason for Akksul to do so. Nevertheless, he found his way to Evfra’s home, a nondescript door in a nondescript neighborhood, one of the few permanent homes in a city of temporary residents. It was numbered, like every other apartment in its row, the walls white and the overhang a vivid green.

He pressed his fingers to the small screen next to the door, then stepped back and folded his hands behind his back. At this time of day, the area was empty, all of its residents working or otherwise occupied. All but the one who finally opened the door for him.

Evfra’s pale skin was flushed dark at his cheekbones, his voice deep and raspy when he said, “I can think of a dozen reasons why you would be here, and none of them are good.”

“The Resistance Headquarters hasn’t burned down, no one I know of has died, all of the complaints currently filling your inbox are petty, and the Moshae has not directed me to be here,” Akksul told him before reaching a hand up and pressing the back of it to Evfra’s cheek in a blatant display of impropriety. “Is it contagious?”

The question, much like the touch, was rude enough to border on offensive. He watched consternation flit over Evfra’s usually impassive face, followed by a brief flash of annoyance that eventually settled on resignation. Wearily, Evfra stepped back and gestured for Akksul to come in. “It’s a combination of overwork and an old war wound, Olvek tells me. A day or two of bedrest and I should be on my feet again.”

“An old war wound?” he asked as he came inside, intrigued. 

Evfra’s home was simple and unadorned, the front room dominated by a desk cluttered with paperwork and a small kitchen, dim sunlight filtering through the windows set high in the walls. The bedroom and bathroom were through a small, dark doorway, the whole floor plan of the apartment tiny and efficient. Better than the quarters Akksul was staying in, but not nearly as fine as some of the other permanent residents of Aya, the ones whose complaints he now juggled on a daily basis.

With a low groan that rattled through his chest in an unhealthy sounding way, Evfra sat down at the tiny table near his cook surface. “A piece of metal lodged in my lungs. Shrapnel. Someday, I will agree to let him cut it out of me, but it’s rarely an issue.”

“And until then, you’re stuck at home because you can’t breathe.” Akksul inspected the desk without any shame, glancing at the messages pulled up but left unanswered. Evfra’s skin had been feverish under the back of his fingers, and there was a soft, ragged rattle to every breath in. He must have realized that he was in no position to issue orders right now, even without the consideration of being visibly ill in public.

“It will pass,” Evfra groaned, rubbing his face. “Why are _you_ here, Akksul?”

A good question. He ignored it for the moment, settling at Evfra’s desk and skimming through the information on the terminal with more attention this time. Many of the messages were marked as urgent, but a first pass revealed that maybe a third truly were; this was familiar enough, after months of handling every crisis the Roekaar could think of, and most of the genuinely time-sensitive messages did not require context he lacked. Evfra was sitting right there, after all.

“You can’t work like this,” he said as Evfra pushed up out of the chair, footsteps heavy. “I could let you sulk here in your home, with the Resistance falling by the wayside, or I could do what I’ve been doing: handling your correspondence.”

Above him, Evfra loomed, one hand braced against the surface of the desk. That he didn’t trust Akksul was both obvious and prudent. But his options were limited, and eventually he said, “It would be easier if you brought a datapad to the bedroom and worked on it in there. I want to be able to see whatever it is you’re sending.”

A different sort of test, this time. He’d barged into Evfra’s private space, disregarded every custom and courtesy the angara had for illness, and demanded to be thanked for it. Most angara would shy away from a further demand for intimacy, but the kett had broken him of that too—too often he’d been there for other angara in the labor camps and for his own in the Roekaar, in those moments when determination hadn’t been enough anymore. It was hard to remember the usual social niceties after holding too many bodies to count as they went from living warm to cold in his arms.

“If that would make you more comfortable.” He scooped up the closest datapad, keying access to it on his multitool, then tipped his chin towards the bedroom. Asking if Evfra could make it that far would just be insulting.

He didn’t look happy about having his bluff called, but Evfra led the way regardless. Akksul slotted that reaction into the ever-growing mental dossier he kept on the leader of the Resistance.

The living block that Evfra resided in was tucked into the lee of the mountain, catching the sun at its height in the middle of the day but growing dim as it wore on. Shadows filled the front room long before the sun set, the golden light that Akksul could see from the Moshae’s offices trapped well above the road that Evfra’s door opened up onto. He was plunged into blue-tinted shadow as he hunted through Evfra’s old messages, memorizing the cadence of his typing and the shape of the words he used.

This was a harder task than mollifying outraged politicians; most of the angara he’d been given talked to Evfra at official functions or never at all, and therefore had no way to recognize when someone else was answering their messages. The Resistance teams that Evfra communicated with daily were a much harder group to fool—and for the moment, Akksul wanted them fooled. Evfra’s strengths as a leader depended on his ability to look infallible. If the angara saw him faltering, some of that magnetic force of personality would falter too.

Evfra’s weight against his side was a heavy anchor, reminding him of the weight that surely rested on his shoulders. He’d stayed awake for almost an hour, acidically remarking on whatever Akksul was focused on, occasionally falling into chest-rattling coughs that brought nothing up. The warmth of his skin was Akksul’s real worry, but the fever stayed steady and low as Evfra fell into a fitful nap.

He responded to one final message from a team in Voeld, thinking all the while about how he might have used this information a year ago, then reached the end of Evfra's inbox. The important inbox, at any rate; there were others filling up in different windows, but none of those needed immediate answers. For the moment, he could sit back and take stock.

And this made Akksul finally ask himself: what _was_ he doing here?

Distraction was not a good enough excuse, for all that he and the Moshae used it to the point of ridiculousness. If he simply kept busy, he would not turn radical again, surely. If he kept himself occupied, there would be no room for him to gather a fighting force of his own and become a real threat. It was the lie they trotted out, palatable enough to pass muster for people who were reluctant to demand further retribution for his crimes, but it was a lie nonetheless.

That it gave him some measure of peace and acceptance—truer than the first excuse, but not true. He told that one to the Moshae, knowing she probably saw through him and not caring in the slightest. It was the one he told himself too, when his resolve faltered and the rage welled up to replace it.

The truth was trickier. Why here? Why Evfra? Why come all the way down to this apartment, bully his way inside and into Evfra's bed, all for the sake of playing secretary? 

Akksul stared at nothing, fingers resting on the virtual keyboard as he processed that thought. It wasn't just a matter of working, indulging in idle fantasies, and accepting that Evfra's heavy gaze would always slip past him again. There was something more that he was hunting for with the same relentless drive that once spurred him across the galaxy in pursuit of any alien that caught his eye.

Evfra's breath rattled in his lungs as he shifted, the warm curve of his brow fitted into the dip of Akksul’s collarbone. He slept as if he were dead—or as if he didn't sleep much at all.

“Is it that simple?” Akksul wondered aloud, watching as Evfra's expression twitched at the sound.

Trust was an odd thing that too many people gave him too easily. Jaal had disliked him once, and Akksul had loathed him in return for the insult, but he'd admired the other man too. People did not stand up to him. They followed him or fell before him, but very rarely did even the most disagreeable angara choose to stand firm against him. Jaal. The Moshae.

And Evfra.

His palm cupped Evfra’s cheek, thumb tracing the scars that cut up across his face. Evfra, who he’d once hated in an abstract way but never known. Evfra, who did not have the burden of knowing Akksul as he was before and finding the new version always lacking. Was the focus Akksul had for him and him alone so easily reduced to novelty?

No, he decided, the feverish heat of Evfra’s skin burning into his palm like acid. The force of his personality was its own draw, the understated tragedy that drove him to seize control of the Resistance as compelling as Akksul’s own history. But it was a factor, and one that might have tripped him into this strange situation in the first place.

The question now was whether or not he intended to do something about it.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever pursued someone with genuine interest before,” he said into the silence that filled Evfra’s bedroom, just low enough that the words disappeared into the rasp of Evfra’s troubled breathing. “I suppose it’s time to see if I’m any good at it.”

* * *

The fever broke sometime close to midnight. Akksul sent another message to the Moshae, regretfully postponing their meeting again before carefully telling her that Evfra knew where he was and had an eye on him—not the whole truth, but enough of it to keep her from alerting guards. Hopefully.

She responded much faster than he’d thought she would, which meant she was staying up late working on some new artifact from the Jaardan facilities hovering outside Meridian. Once, he might have joined her, or perhaps scolded her for ignoring her health; now, he only acknowledged that she was as restless as he was, and suggested that they could put off their daily meetings until she’d finished with whatever curiosity had stolen her attention.

It was only fair, considering how thoroughly Evfra had captured his.

Fever and old injury aside, Evfra rose before the dawn and took his medicine with a reasonable amount of distaste. He seemed irritated that he’d slept through the night, but not so irritated that he refused Akksul’s offer to join him in the kitchen, a ration of nutrient paste split between them and a tisane brewing on the counter.

“Your breathing sounds better,” Akksul observed, ignoring once again all the polite norms that would keep him silent otherwise.

“Hm. It wasn’t necessary for you to play nursemaid. I would have been fine.” Evfra’s mouth pulled into a sour expression, perhaps at being reminded that if he was _better_ , he still wasn’t _well_. It would be another day before he could walk into headquarters without drawing some attention.

“I’m aware.” Greyish light filtered into the kitchen as the sun slowly rose, bleaching Evfra’s blue skin to something colder, like the snows on Voeld. “I’ll stay another day, just in case. It’s easier to ask your input directly than to try and communicate with messages.”

“You—” Evfra sat his cup down. His brow furrowed, lighting sparking in his eyes as he leaned forward, the wariness that he’d carried turning into genuine anger. It probably wasn’t wise, how compelling Akksul found that, but so many of his choices had been unwise that he felt no shame adding one more to the list. “Is there a reason why you’re here, Akksul?”

“I have nothing better to do,” Akksul said, as honest and blunt as Evfra on his worst days. “I have no interest in playing the role of your secretary if you’re not even around to see it. I find you attractive, and this is as good an excuse as I’ll ever get to see you in something other than battle-ready gear. How many more reasons do you want?”

Evfra opened his mouth, then shut it and rubbed his knuckles between his eyes as if to ward off a headache. “You’re not being serious.”

“I am always serious these days. As amusing as it is to play games with bureaucrats, it holds no appeal if you’re not involved.” His lips quirked into a small smile, calculated to be just thin enough to be insulting. “The angara appreciate honesty, and you more than most, Evfra. Would you like me to reconsider that honesty?”

“You don’t like me, Akksul. I seem to recall you hating me quite a bit, actually,” Evfra said, pulling his hand away from his face and locking their eyes together. Even with the fever broken, there was a slight haziness to his usually clear gaze, and the wariness was back.

He regretted that, a bit. Akksul let the smile drop, leaning back in his chair as he considered Evfra’s words and the actual objection buried within them. Not to the professed attraction, but to the idea that Akksul was being honest about it. Well enough; their shared history, and the things he’d done with the Roekaar, were enough to undermine the words he said now. Had this conversation taken place several months ago, Evfra would even be right in distrusting Akksul’s professed interest.

Strange, how he’d allowed so many things and then drew the line here. But perhaps not strange at all, considering how rigidly the leader of the Resistance barred his heart.

After some thought, Akksul asked, “Are you familiar with the spiritual practices of the Gallir on Issul? They were a smaller community of angara, prior to the imposed isolation of the Scourge, and unique in that they didn’t engage in ancestor worship. By the time we rediscovered the planet, they had disappeared entirely, with only historical references to guide us.”

“I can’t say that I’ve ever studied lost angaran civilization, no.” Evfra watched him closely, but mercifully he did not ask what one had to do with the other.

“Hm. You would make the archivist miserable with that attitude.” Akksul watched for the there-and-gone again expression of annoyance, Evfra’s usual response to reminders that scientists the galaxy over despaired over his lack of curiosity. “The important thing is that they maintained a more deistic approach to religion, believing that their gods guiding angara into the next life, holding the cycle of reincarnation firm. The records we have indicate that prophecy and destiny were held in high regard.”

“So what happened to them?” Evfra asked, sounding less wary. Not relaxed, not by a long shot, but cautiously willing to listen. That was good.

“The Scourge. Cut off from every other angaran planet, with significant chunks of Issul rendered uninhabitable, including one of their holy sites built around a Jaardan relic—for a people that believed so strongly in divine guidance, it was as if their gods had turned against them. There were those who believed that they were being punished, but a few pieces of personal writing in a surviving space terminal stated that many chose instead to say the gods were dead.” Akksul stood, picking up the kettle and refilling both their cups. “As far as we can tell, the majority of the Gallir were reabsorbed into the broader Issul culture without much hold to their spiritual beliefs, though certain recipes and methods for building are maintained in small outposts. Had the kett ever found the planet, we might not have even that.”

Evfra’s gaze followed him as he sat down again, his brow furrowed in thought—though Akksul felt that the fate of some ancient angara civilization was not the thing Evfra was thinking about. When he said nothing more, Evfra cleared his throat. “What was the purpose of the history lesson?”

“You were a god to us, Evfra.” Even now, the slowly rising sun painted Evfra as something like a god, with the marbled skin of an idol buried in some forgotten temple. Not all angara ruins were built around the backbone the Jaardan left them, but enough were that Akksul found himself wondering what Evfra would look like against black and green instead. “What you did with the Resistance was impossible. In less than a year, you took us from uselessly flailing at the kett to something much more likely to succeed. You gave us hope. We thought you were infallible.”

“That was a fool’s hope,” Evfra said, mouth tightening. Even now, he disliked being reminded of his status in the eyes of the average angara. Yet another difference between them, Akksul supposed; he’d reveled in it, reveled in the knowledge that he was all-knowing and all-powerful in the eyes of the Roekaar. It was a heady thing, that sort of influence.

“It was. But it persisted. And when you didn’t rescue us—when you didn’t rescue _me_ —that hope was shattered. You make mistakes. You cannot be anything other than the living, breathing person you are in front of me. You aren’t a god, and that idea was… intolerable.”

Evfra didn’t answer, though he looked unsurprised. Not happy, but unsurprised. Akksul took the moment to analyze his new feelings compared to the old, trying to determine if he was falling into the same trap a second time. But no, his interest in Evfra was individual now, not idealistic. The person underneath the reputation fascinated him more than the god ever had.

“I know better now,” he continued eventually, when Evfra seemed like he wasn’t going to say anything at all. “It is ironic, I suppose, that I had to utterly fail as a revolutionary to realize it, but we are all fools at times. But seeing you as a man first has changed my perspective somewhat.”

“So you find me attractive now?” Evfra asked, sounding less doubtful than before but still not entirely certain.

“You were handsome even when I hated you, Evfra. Now that I don’t hate you, I feel much freer to acknowledge it.” Akksul sipped at the tisane, then added, “I have noticed that you don’t object to that on principle.”

“I had a husband. It would be hypocritical of me.” Evfra sighed, shoulders slumping as he finally turned his piercing gaze out into the apartment instead. The selfish heart beating in Akksul’s chest resented the loss.

“Tell me to go, and I’ll go,” he said quietly. “Despite what you might think, I have no intention of rebuilding the Roekaar. You should not feel obliged to keep me within reach simply to prevent it.”

“That’s not the issue. Or, I suppose, it’s not the whole of the issue, Akksul. You’d be easier to handle if you weren’t so damn attractive yourself, but here we are.” Evfra lifted a hand, gesturing helplessly in the direction of the Resistance headquarters. “I don’t know if I can trust myself around you.”

That was a surprise to hear. Akksul blinked, then allowed himself the honest smile that wanted to stretch across his face. “So you’re saying that I have more of a chance than I thought?”

“I’m saying that you can stay for the day,” Evfra told him sourly. “I’ll decide how I feel about the rest of it once I can breathe without struggling.”

It was not a ‘no’. Just like that, Akksul had a new thing to focus his attention on.

* * *

Somehow, he’d forgotten to be angry. Perhaps it was that Evfra’s magnetism drew him so close that he couldn’t fall into the old directionless fury, not with his internal compass focused on the man reviewing reports next to him. Or maybe it was something a little less obsessive, months of healing finally beginning to take now that Akksul wasn’t actively pruning away the goodwill extended towards him.

It might be neither. One particularly presumptive message to Evfra and the rage came rushing back, all the general offense at the world overlaid with a targeted sort of disgust towards the merchant currently whining about her missing shipments lacking priority over the liberation of the remaining labor camps.

Akksul reminded himself that he didn’t hate the angara, any angara, not anymore. That was something he’d dug the roots out of, torn from his chest and burned on the passing. The blind sort of hatred that led him to shooting Jaal—it was a poison, not only to his soul but to his cause, the willingness to destroy the angara in pursuit of revenge just as damaging as anything the kett could do. But sometimes, the whining bureaucrats who bothered Evfra incessantly did their best to remind him of how it felt to loathe the whole galaxy, alien and angara both.

He wondered how the Moshae managed. Most days, Akksul could engage with the intellectual diversion without rancor, and most days he found merit in the complaints, but this was a bridge too far for that amused distance he cultivated. He wasn’t even the focus of the message. The Moshae, who invited much stronger responses deliberately, must have a far worse inbox to handle.

Still. He read the message again, trying to formulate a response that was diplomatic enough to be acceptable while still expressing the depth of his disdain. A third time, because all the clever wordplay had deserted him in the face of the anger rising like magma, filling him until the slightest tremor shook the datapad he was working on.

“Ah. Kaaji. She has that effect on people.” Evfra’s dry voice cut through the haze that had settled over Akksul’s thoughts, his body warm where it pressed into Akksul’s side. At some point, he’d taken notice of the lack of typing and leaned over to read whatever had provoked the silence.

“From one of the old families?” Akksul asked, unable to help the tightness in his voice. If Evfra noticed it, he wasn’t acknowledging it, but Akksul thought that very little escaped Evfra’s notice.

“No. But she lucked into a good source of materials for building and repairing starships, which has given her an inflated sense of self-importance. Usually she bothers Paaran, but she must have finally lost her temper and sent her my way.” Evfra pulled the datapad from Akksul’s resistant grip with none of the weakness that had been evident the day before.

“And you know how to handle her?” It would be a good chance for him to take a break and breathe, find some level of equilibrium in the depths of the maelstrom of emotion he was fighting through.

“I’m going to tell her to stop wasting my time and then send her back to Paaran,” Evfra said, fingers flying over the keyboard. By the time Akksul fully realized the consequences of that, the message was sent and Evfra had started scrolling through the rest of the messages.

“You know,” he said, grabbing the anger with both hands and trying to shove it down again, “doing things like that defeats the point of having someone else handle your messages. When you said you were bad at talking, I didn’t expect quite this degree of—”

“Kaaji knows better than to send a message like this,” Evfra interrupted, handing the datapad back. “She wanted to provoke me, get me angry, possibly get me to say something stupid about it at the next Audience. If she’s going to play those sorts of games, she can do it with someone else.”

For just a moment, all the old bitterness came rushing back. Nevermind that the merchant would have complained about Akksul’s demanded rescue too, nevermind that Akksul was ready to shred her with far crueler words in a way she couldn’t fight back against—it was Evfra playing god with lives again, dismissing some people as unimportant and others as worth saving. The anger wanted a shape and a target, and Kaaji wasn’t a face he knew while Evfra was sitting beside him in a permanent residence on Aya, where nothing was permanent. It could be so _easy_ to hate him instead.

Reason reasserted itself a second later, his thoughts twisting in on themselves as he ruthlessly pruned the bitterness away. Pointless to linger on it. Evfra wasn’t the one he was angry with, not really, no matter how much simpler it would be.

Akksul set the datapad to the side, ignoring the startled noise Evfra made and burying his face in his hands. If he could find his footing, he could refocus on the new diversion and hide the anger away again. Perhaps he wasn’t healing, could never be healed, but the flare of attraction and interest was enough to distract him. It could be enough. It _would_ be enough.

The most infuriating part was that Kaaji could be _his_ with the smallest of nudges. A dedicated supplier of materials vital to the infrastructure of space travel, and the merchant was petty enough to spam her complaints to the governor of Aya, turning to Evfra like a child to her next favorite mother when the first hasn’t given a proper response. If he could ignore the callous nature of the demand for attention, if he were still devoted to building the pyre that would burn away the memories, if he let the anger take hold and drive him towards a different kind of goal entirely. She could be his.

A hand pressed into the curve of his spine between his shoulderblades, slowly dragging up the line of muscle until it rested at the back of his skull. Despite the fact that he’d been inside for two days, Evfra’s field was still strong, the brush of it against Akksul’s own quiet and inviting. Surprisingly gentle, considering how powerful a personality Evfra had, but he must also have practice at moderating himself.

He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids, the pressure building there in counterpoint to the softness of Evfra’s touch, and breathed. This was a pointless thing to be enraged over.

“You know,” Evfra said quietly, “I’d wondered why you were so quiet. We’d prepared for you to orate, had plans for whatever group you inevitably started to incite on Aya. Paaran was worried you would run against her in the next election because we all thought you might win. But this is not the way to deal with it, Akksul.”

“So you would rather me tear at the foundations of your Resistance, Evfra?” he asked, his own voice rough with the anger choking him. If Evfra had shrapnel rattling around in his lungs, then Akksul had it rattling around in his soul—but there were no antibiotics, no surgery that could provide him with surcease.

“Perhaps not,” Evfra allowed, though his hand didn’t move. “I do prefer the reality where you aren’t actively undermining my efforts at every turn.”

“If I wanted to, I could take it all.” If he pressed any harder, he’d blind himself. Akksul dragged his hands down his face, opened his eyes to stare unseeing at some corner of Evfra’s room, grounding himself in the simple design of it. “You’ve given me entirely too much freedom with that.”

“Will you?” The sun was high in the sky, but the only sound was the low rasp of Evfra’s breathing. Outside was quiet. Inside Akksul’s head, the cacophony of rage was deafening.

It wasn’t a lie. How many times had he reflected on the foolishness of this job, especially considering that Evfra knew his way with words? If he cared about the angara a little less, if he were slightly more contemptuous of Evfra’s goals, if he had learned nothing from Jaal’s resolute unwillingness to fire first—he could do it.

He would not.

“I used to love my work, Evfra,” Akksul said, rather than answering the question. “I was the Moshae’s favored student. I had a gift for languages and programming, and it was like the ancient ruins leapt to my touch. Before the Pathfinder came, only the Sages in Havarl could manipulate the Jaardan’s technology as deftly as we could. It was something I could take pride in, and it was something that brought me joy. And I would have destroyed the Forge just to drive a wedge between you and the aliens.”

He would have done it so angara like Kaaji could complain about their own being rescued from the torture Akksul had gone through. Or perhaps she wouldn’t have; with that much devastation under his belt, perhaps he would have gone on to greater, viler things. Maybe he would have, in his own blind way, helped the kett finished conquering a galaxy only just starting to find a way to truly exist.

There was a gusty sigh from above, and then Evfra muttered, “If nothing else, I can commend you on your ability to time things for the worst possible moment. I’m still having trouble breathing.”

“I can tell,” Akksul said, something very unlike a smile twitching across his face before he smoothed his expression out. If he sat up it would dislodge Evfra’s hand, so he did not sit up. “I just want to feel that joy again. I want to feel something other than… this. At least when I’m dancing to your tune, it gives me something else to focus on.”

“But that’s not the only reason, I hope, considering you were declaring your affections for me this morning.” Evfra’s hand finally moved again, catching on his shoulder and pulling him upright. “You will never stop being angry. There are more productive ways to deal with it than this, but it will always be there.”

Something cruel lingered on his tongue, but Akksul swallowed the words and looked at Evfra’s face instead. The restless sleep last night had done a great deal to lessen the bruising under Evfra’s eyes, and his skin was no longer flushed, but there was a weariness to the set of his jaw that suggested the reprieve would not last long. Strange, to remember that Evfra was not that much older than him, that he hadn’t always been a revolutionary, that he’d been married once.

It wasn’t the same kind of tragedy that drove him, not entirely. But like the Moshae, he _knew_ in a way that most surviving angara did not.

“So, are you suggesting I _should_ be rebuilding the Roekaar?” Akksul asked instead, doing his best to indicate he was joking without actually doing so. It was a temptation that would always be there, after all.

Evfra grimaced, then dragged his head close, pressing their brows together as he met Akksul’s eyes. “Find a better joke. Or find a better diversion. I can have you start training some of the new recruits, if you promise not to fill their ears with promises of killing the other aliens too.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” Evfra’s lips were close, dangerously so, and the churning frustration filling his chest was morphing into something much less awful. He wondered if Evfra realized, then marveled at the idea that he’d ever thought the man was _incompetent_ at manipulating others.

“You have plenty of them yourself, I don’t think adding one of mine to the mix will do much,” Evfra said dryly, but his hand had fallen to Akksul’s cheek and he hadn’t moved away either. “I need you to promise me that you won’t, Akksul.”

“Will you believe me if I do?” he asked, voice distant as his own hand crept up towards Evfra’s jaw, his palm molding against the column of Evfra’s neck as his fingertips dragged against the folds of muscle framing that regal face.

“No. But I would like to. Keep to the truth and maybe one day, I will.” And Evfra leaned in just that little bit further, pressing his dry lips to Akksul’s with a hesitance that seemed unlike him. It vanished the moment Akksul kissed back, that resolute personality coming back to bear in an instant as Akksul dragged him closer.

Evfra’s trust was a fragile, tenuous thing, and that made it desirable in a way trust never had been. He would have to fight for it, every step of the way, and it was very possible that it would never fully belong to him—but where Akksul should have been angry, he was thrilled instead. Because it was a _chance_ and nothing more, it was something he had to earn without the natural gift for speaking he’d always used, and because it came with the heat of Evfra’s mouth on his own, the drag of his palm down Akksul’s chest.

It would be a challenge greater than any challenge he’d faced before. Akksul pushed Evfra down, swallowed the groan that earned him, and dreamed of a future he’d never thought to have again.

**Author's Note:**

> “Pathfinder,  
> Whatever Jaal or anyone else says -- I, for one, am glad you killed Akksul. The things he could make people do... it's better that he's dead.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Lathoul”
> 
> Man, the stuff this says about Akksul’s charisma though.


End file.
